The European cultural TV channel Arte innovates and launches its first video game ! Immerse yourself in this fascinating and unique experience to uncover the history and secrets of Fonts & Characters ! Play as 2 dots and travel through the ages of typographic styles and techniques.

Reviews

“TYPE:RIDER--THE "FINAL FONTASY" OF VIDEO GAMES--ENCOURAGES PLAYERS TO LEARN ABOUT TYPE BY EXPLORING A WORLD OF FONTS, MARIO-STYLE.”
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About This Game

The European cultural TV channel Arte innovates and launches its first video game !
Immerse yourself in this fascinating and unique experience to uncover the history and secrets of Fonts & Characters !

Play as 2 dots and travel through the ages of typographic styles and techniques.
From the rock paintings of prehistoric times to Pixel art of the 2000’s, solve all the riddles by riding the most popular fonts and characters (Garamond, Helvetica, Times New Roman, Pixel, Comic Sans...) in a very captivating musical and visual environment.

Type:Rider is an adventure puzzle game produced by AGAT – EX NIHILO and ARTE that brings gaming experience to a whole new daring level.

Type:Rider is a strikingly ambitious game. It’s a platformer that has you play as a pair of dots who jump, swim, and solve environmental puzzles to progress. It’s also an educational game that teaches you about the history of typography as you play.The game plays out as a series of side-scrolling levels that hinder your progress with puzzles and obstacles instead of enemies. The usual platformer ingredients are on display here, like spikes, lava, water, and moving platforms. It might not sound terribly original, but the developers have pumped tons of creativity into the game’s design. Each world is based on a particular font, and the environments are made up of giant letters in that font, plus whatever new printing technology became available at the time.The controls aren’t as precise as they could be, but checkpoints are closely spaced so you never lose much progress. Every good platformer has collectibles, and here they’re the letters of the alphabet. A number of asterisks are also scattered throughout the levels; grabbing them unlocks sections of text that teach the history of writing and typography. The history is fun to read even if you’re not particularly interested in fonts.Like in Limbo, the graphics are silhouetted and stunning, set against abstract pages of text, drawings, and photographs. The music is pleasantly atmospheric, changing with the timeframe the levels take place in.One problem– and it’s a minor one– is that stopping to read the text sections as you collect asterisks in the game does a disservice to the gameplay. It’s far better to play the levels without stopping for the history lessons, and then read the texts you’ve collected between levels.Despite the somewhat mushy controls, Type:Rider is an incredibly fun, unique platformer. It manages to entertain and inform in equal measure, which is more than most games try to do.

Great concept, amazing visuals, interesting historical lessons. But this game is a platformer, so it needs responsive controls. Alas, this is not the case here. Movement is sluggish, the character (colon, in fact) reacts slowly and even the most basic actions require a lot of patience and luck.

A short but sweet review for a short but sweet game; Type:Rider is a simple and delicate platformer type game - great for the casual gamer! It involves some clever physics mechanics, it's very pretty to look at and listen to, little to no learning curve so it's quite easy to play, and you may even learn a thing or two about the history of typography (font) while playing. It's a little bundle of quality craftsmanship from the developers/designers, you can tell a lot of love went into the game.

It's affordable as it is, and if you see it on sale, go ahead and grab it. I'd definitely recommend it to anybody.

At first, I thought I've found another game as good as 140 or Thomas Was Alone. It was until the second set of levels... Now first of all, the graphics are very good execpt for the Futura levels in my opinion. The music is really enjoyable too and the ambience is there. There's quite a few pages about typography history. But as with any games, the gameplay is the most important part and it's where this game has many issues...

First of all, the controls. Your character is a colon. Sure, it allows for some tactics with lines and such, but it also makes it hard to control. Also the gravity and acceleration are so wacky... It just doesn't feel right.

Then you get into bugs, a game breaking bug where a letter (letter are obstacles and platforms in this game) is facing the wrong way, making the level impossible to finish. In case it happens, you have to restart the level all over again and hope it's fixed. Sometimes the music/sounds go away and sometimes when you pause or alt-tab, the controls doesn't work anymore and you have to Alt+F4 out of the game. Also i've had an issue where my character got stuck in the middle of a letter and I had to restart the game...

Some more issues: the maximum resolution is 1600x900, there's no 1080p, there's a few frame drops throughout the game and the last achievement is really frustating. Also you need to modify your computer settings to change the language of the game (It's in your natal language or pc language by default).

I didin't enjoy playing through this game very much because of all the CONs i've listed. There are way more fluid and responsive platformers out there that you should play first, if you're out of platformers, you could always pick this game up, but with it's controls it's quite frustating to play.

The game looks good and sounds good, and you can even learn a thing or two about the history of typography. Fantastic! The downside to this is sluggish controls that ruin most of the fun. You steer a colon (the punctuation mark) around the levels, but it reacts quite slowly to your inputs – it feels like it is constantly wading through sticky goo, but even in the air it feels inert. (To clarify, i don't mean that the controls are unresponsive per se, it's rather the slow-moving and slowly-reacting behaviour of your character.)

And then there are the "usual" issues many indie games suffer from these days: No way to skip past the opening titles and no options menu (you can't even change the display resolution, and the in-game language is set to whatever region your OS is set to).

As much as i would like to recommend this game, i can't because these issues weigh it down too heavily.

A beautiful, fantastic puzzle platformer that also happens to be educational, Type:Rider teaches you about typography through the ages. The design is impeccable: each era has a distinct visual and auditory style that is wrapped in a remarkably soothing package. The generally easy game does have the occasional difficulty spike and there are some rare typos/translation errors in the historic entries (nothing rendering them incomprehensible/unpleasant - at least in the English version) but it is definitely a journey worth taking. Don't let it's relatively short game time put you off, your time will definitely be well spent with this game!

Cons:You can get stuck/become unable to jump/fall out of the minecart. Doesn't happen too often though, and the respawn points are fairly dense.If you leave mid-chapter, you lose progress (collectibles) from that run.The final (secret) level is infuriatingly difficult, as is getting one of the achievements that requires you to play through a whole level without dying.The text on pretty much every page in the books has typos/missing words/grammatical errors/odd English, giving the impression that it wasn't written by a native English speaker, or even proofread for that matter.

Pros:It's stylish, I suppose.

Ultimately, you'd be better off just reading the Wikipedia article on typography.

Well here is the thing. Usually when you want to jump right, you press the correct buttons to do so and expect that to happen. If you play this game, get used to the little dots jumping left when you want them to go right. What if you want them to jump left? No sorry they don't do that they only jump in place then. They are also slow to respond to command so get used to not being able to react to sudden changes in your way when they happen.

It pains me to press THUMBS DOWN for this game because it looks so pleasing to eyes and you get to learn from it but the mechanics ruin the whole thing. I dont know if I will even finish it because tetris level is torture with these controls. Boo.

This is a fairly fun game and I appriciate a game developer attempting to teach their audience about history. The gameplay is straight-forward and mostly intuitive, though some mechanics are unique and require a little getting used to. You can tell that the devs put a lot of work into their level design and creating an atmosphere that compliments what the player is learning about.

One major drawback to this game is the sloppy manner in which the educational aspect is presented. The developer's refusal to use the past tense is a constant annoyance. Numerous errors in sentence structure, grammar, and spelling plague the text. This is somewhat ironic in a game dedicated to teaching about the history of writing.

Overall, the game is entertaining and does an adequate job educating the player. I'd recommend this game, but I'd wait for it to go on sale.

Type:Rider in really a unique game and interesting game. Is a game that manages to mix wisely entertainment and culture, provides a very well presented history of typography. Everything about it is relaxing and you never feel rushed. The game is beautiful and so is the music that accompanies it. This is the type of game that everyone can find something to like about it. The atmosphere and level design wonderfully compliment the information provided. The colon shape of your hero is good choice for the game mechanics as it allows you to grab corners and spin as you play. Overall, I had fun with the game, and enjoyed the artwork, music and concept.

I originally bought this game because I enjoyed the art style, the screen shots reminded me of Limbo, and because I am a fan of typography as a graphic artist. I have taken my fair share of typography courses and I figured it would be fun to see another spin on things in a fun educational style and at the same time enjoy a challenging puzzle game.

The good: The visual style and the music are both fantastic. I enjoyed the choice for the main character. The level designs are fun and each one uses the font you are currently in as the level building blocks. The slight variation of the jumping/swimming/riding carts was interesting. The end level puzzles with the white dot were fairly interesting as well and the most challenging part of the game. If this is all you are looking for then I recommend you try to get this in a sale at some point.

The bad: The game prides itself in "experience and uncover the history and secrets of Fonts and Characters" in the main description, yet all you get is a series of afterthought slides as a background as you are trying to go through each level. There is no narrative or even text, explaining, why you are going from Didot to Clarendon. When you onlock asterisks, you can read more about specific fonts, a short narrative could have elevated the game so much more than a wall of text here.

Each level you ride/jump from A to Z, some letters are for you to collect, some are for you to jump on to complete the level. Overall the main puzzles are fairly simplistic. Another big question mark moment in this game, is when, the colon you are playing, for no obvious reason but to try and add unimaginative difficulty to the game, starts getting shot at by a sniper somewhere. Thankfully this only goes on for one level. Overall somewhat shallow execution of an otherwise promissing concept.

Game is fairly short, finished it in 1.5 hours not even enough to get all the cards.

Again, this might be a fun play if you can get it during a sale, the graphics and audio are great, but the game is somewhat short and not very challenging.

If you are looking for a fun video game I cannot recommend this game. If you are looking for an interactive opportunity to learn about the history of writing and typing then I can recommend this game (this is assuming the information taught is correct, this statement is necessary because of the issues I had seen in the game).

The GameThe controls are very difficult and somewhat unpredictable. When reading the books the game will sometimes not pause, this results: in sounds and music repeating itself on a few second loops, physics objects continue to move, deaths and missed items. Sometimes the mouse and the controller combine thus making menu navigation difficult. However, the level design throughout the game is pretty good, particularly the last few levels.

The KnowledgeSpelling and grammatical errors are much more prevalent than you would expect from a game teaching about writing and texts. Interesting subject matter, assuming they used reputable sources.

My ThoughtsEverything is mediocre. The gameplay is just good enough to be playable, the writing is just good enough to be understandable. Because they didn't do any part particularly well, it is hard to tell what was the makers focus. It is a shame though because had they tested the game better, fixed the controls a little or made you control a period instead of a colon and proofread the books, this could have been an excellent game. This is why I have my doubts about what I learned through this game, hopefully that historical aspect was their focus.

I wish educational games like this existed 20 years ago - our gaming landscape might be very different now.However, we're still at a starting point: I'm glad the game exists, and equally glad I'll never have to play it again.

Nice art and theme but FÚCK this game is frustrating. It is buggy as hell, so getting ANYTHING done is a nightmare. If you press escape too early after dying, then woah, my escape key doesn't work anymore! Now I have to Alt+tab and force quit the game! Or JESUS, the minecart levels in this game...sometimes it randomly ejects you from the minecart even when it's upright (which kills you), or it won't let you out at the end, so you are forced to restart the level! The worst is when you go through a letter and you DON'T COLLECT IT!! That's just hitting the surface of these bugs. The gameplay is shít too. It doesn't teach you anything. I'm not saying it should instruct you everything - it should just have levels that introduce game mechanics or obstacles in a friendly way instead of letting you think everything is okay while you're sitting on the power lines in Clarendon part 3 when suddenly a spark flies across the screen at mach fúcking 10, killing you. Heed my warning and beware the poor design!

I played this as a recommendation for a relaxing short game with easy achivements. Boy was that bad advice.The first few levels are exactly that, soothing music relaxing levels. But after that its a total mess.This is one of those clumsy control games, where it's all luck and no skill, and when it gets a bit harder it get extremelly stressful and annoying. It turns out to be such a tedious and frustrating experience, with some aweful level design.This will leave you raging instead of satisfied, and is far form being the good game that can afford to be this messy and nerve wrecking.

If you want a quick enjoyable game similar to Thomas was alone you're in for a hell of a surprise.Do yourself a favor and avoid this. Much funnier games in the "clumsy control" category and far better platforming games out there. You probably own this dirt already since its practically free in every bundle. Just dont bother playing it.

You go around collecting different letters and learn about the history of fonts.What more do you want?Visuals are cool and music is cool, It somehow manages to make you interested in fonts and is fun to play!!8/10

The game teaches you a history of typography, gives you insights of origin of fonts, and makes you hate itself and Comic Sans. Though visual design of the game is close to awesome, controls really suck. And what do you want? — You are given a control over a pair of balls, and do I need to tell you how hard it is to control a pair of balls? So given many ways to die, you meet very repetitive yet a bit randomized gameplay: that way you can’t really get ready to the parts you die. Music though actually pretty good gets repetitive, too, and starts to annoy you.

So while hating Comic Sans is good, I would not recommend this game, there must be better ways to learn typography.

Concept is different, art is beautiful, the lesson is interesting (too wordy for me, but still good).Mechanics, however, are bad. The character is slow to respond and physics behave in a rather alien way. it takes some time and a lot of patience to get used to it. Definitely not instinctive.

What a neat little game. It is an artistic platformer with historical tidbits about the orgins of typography. Has a nice soundtrack, slick visuals, and serviceable controls. I got in a Humble Bundle cheap but I recommend it at full price if you want a little eye candy and a history lesson :)

EDIT: Also, the secret Comic Sans level is the best thing in the world.